Winning With Him (Men of Summer #2) by Lauren Blakely

I don’t know what to make of that, especially when something like a butterfly has the audacity to land on my chest.

It reappears, bigger and faster, over Christmas when I call to wish him a happy holiday. Then, on a Thursday morning in February, it shows up again, accompanying a text from Declan Steele.





21





Declan





Then



* * *



The first few months after Grant leaves New York are the hardest.

I’ve never really known what that’s like—getting over someone. Everyone else has been a clean break.

This is the opposite of a clean break. It’s a messy ending, one that keeps spilling over into my life, but at least there is baseball at the end of a cold winter.

The sport has gotten me through hard times before and it does it again as I learn how to hit a slider well, improve my fielding more, and drive up my consistency at the plate even higher.

I spend time with Emma, Fitz and Dean, Tucker and Marissa, and Brady and Greer. Over the next few years, the latter two couples get married a month apart and I go to their weddings.

Tucker ties the knot first, and I attend his wedding stag. I go to Brady’s February wedding alone.

And life goes on like that.

I develop new interests. I find new bands to listen to, I play paintball with Fitz, I scour stores and libraries for new books to try out. Dean and I become closer, and the brainiac in him keeps pumping recommendations at me—non-fiction stories of scandals and racy tales of business upheavals.

I eat them all up.

Those books are my gateway drug, and I go down the rabbit hole into memoirs, starting with comedians for laughs, then moving to harder-hitting tales. Stories of men and women bucking their upbringing, battling addiction, and most of all, struggling to understand what it means to love an addict.

And how loving an addict has made it hard, for some, to love themselves.

I bristle a bit as I read, since sometimes it feels like these stories are mirrors, and I’m not sure I want to see the reflection.

But I don’t stop. I keep reading. I keep learning.

I see my dad a few times. He asks to come to a game in San Francisco when I play the Cougars, but that feels like the worst idea in the world. I convince him to come to Los Angeles instead, buying him first-class tickets, several nights at a swank hotel, and all the Hollywood star tours he and his girlfriend could want, since he’s found a new lady now. Her name is Jackie.

At the ballpark in Los Angeles, he’s up to his usual shenanigans. Meeting the guys on the field, doling out hitting tips, talking up the game.

“You should do batting practice with us tomorrow, Jon,” Tucker suggests before our Bandits game. “It’ll be fun.”

I don’t think Tucker and I have the same definition of that word.

But my dad’s brown eyes implore me.

Coach says it’s okay and my dad throws batting practice the next day. He looks happier than he ever has before.

Trouble is, a few weeks later, he and Jackie hit a casino in Northern California. He slides right back into his old ways, his twin addictions ruling him. When he runs into financial trouble, I don’t balk. I just write the check.

It’s easier.

But it’s also all I know how to do.





When the holidays march closer, I make plans with my mom and Tyler to go to Tokyo again. It’s become a tradition, one we’ve done for the last three Christmases since Grant won Rookie of the Year. I’ve been getting to know my stepbrother, his wife, and their young daughter. Mom, Tyler, and I decide to stick around in January and travel across Japan, visiting Kyoto, Osaka, and Hiroshima.

Before I go, though, I have my agency’s holiday party to attend.

Grant and I are both repped by Premiere, and I wonder if he will be there.

I wonder, and I walk a little faster.

On a chilly December night in New York, I head into a chichi restaurant in Chelsea, where the firm has rented a private room. My heart kicks like a horse when I spot Grant chatting with Fitz at the makeshift bar.

Fitz waves me over. “Look what the cat dragged in,” my hockey bud says to me, then he claps me on the back. “Bring it in for a hug, mofo.”

I’ve seen him recently, so it’s not like we need to hug it out.

Which means I know what he’s doing. Fitz is trying to get me to hug it out with Grant. I say hi to the catcher next, with a bro hug that turns into a melt-my-fucking-body embrace even though we’re barely touching.

But we don’t have to be wrapped up in each other for my heart to pound.

Hugging the man you once loved is a unique kind of torture. One hit of that barbershop scent and I’m taking a trip way back in time.

To some of my favorite days.

All of them belong to him.

I pull apart so I’m not sporting wood or cartoon-heart eyes for the whole party.

“Good to see you,” I say, my voice a little rough.

“You too.”

A split second later, Fitz’s eyes find Haven, since she reps him too. “Need to go talk to the boss lady. See y’all later.” Then he stage-whispers to us both, “In case you were wondering, I have no boundaries with the two of you.”

He takes off with a wink.

As he weaves his way to Haven, I let my eyes linger on Grant for a little longer. He’s dressed casually in a maroon V-neck sweater that hugs his pecs and worships those powerful arms.